Portal & Backend behavior testing: Behave Alike Testing

I have used this testing technique during one of my test phase, where we were testing the portal applications

This test technique is applicable where we have portal application & equivalent functionality in R/3(back-end) as well.

I will take the examples from EAM where we have portal & R/3 transactions available to create/change/display the objects Equipment, Functional Location, Orders, Task list, Notifications etc.

Portal applications have its own benefits, End User need not to remember all the transactions. But at the same time its mandatory functionality should behave same whether it’s is launched from portal or R/3 transactions.

We have tested different combinations and ensured that functionality is behaving in same manner in all the cases. Wherever this deviates from expected behavior we can analyze the behavior further & report an issue.

If we test both (R/3 & portal) of them separately without comparison, it’s difficult to validate the exact & expected behavior.

Prerequisites:

Portal configurations for system should already be taken care.

User Roles

I have described below few aspects of functionality which we should test.

Few Combinations which we validated were:

Open the object in change mode in portal & try changing it in R/3 and vice verse.

Expected results are: object should be locked & not available for changes.

Expected results are: Objects created in portal should be available in database table in back-end system.

Block the Object status as inactive in R/3.

Expected results are: Status should be updated on portal for respective object & we should not be able to change it any further.

There are many other cases/combinations which can be compared. With this test technique we can ensure the functionality is robust & identical, does not change its behavior with change in test environment or technology.

This article might be useful for testers who are testing the portal & will help them in designing there testing even better.

I will further share my findings & new ways of testing for any new functionality from my future test phases.